The book starts with a comprehensive and fascinating account of the Western Himalayan foreland basin, perhaps the first of its kind on any foreland basin, and ends with the origin of the orogenic system itself. Its wide spectrum data base is likely to appeal to a readership of diverse interests. It breaks fresh grounds on many aspects of Himalayan Geology with an in-depth analysis of the basin-fill material and the structure and tectonics of the foredeep and the fold belt. It establishes, for example, that the stability order of heavy minerals is perceptible both in time (stratigraphy) and space (paleodrainage) correlation; a cyclic distribution pattern operated not only on detrital grain size and mineral composition but also on sediment colour, a function of tectonic pulsation and global climatic state; the fold belt and the foredeep followed a separate evolutionary path; frequency and spread of unconformities, a factor of hydrocarbon accumulation, varied in space and time depending upon block movements of the spectacularly inhomogeneous Himalayan crust; the intracrustal boundary thrusts manifested a distinct N to S sequence of subsidence, arrested subsidence and uplift of blocks; the weak compressive stress in the fold belt ensued from the fact that compression is secondary to inversion, and not vice versa; and finally, the mountain uplift with a slow initiation but exponentially rapid termination resulted from mantle upwelling and crustal inversion, and not crustal subduction. A chronologically constrained energy-sequence stratigraphy, seismic profiles in the foreland and the Central Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, paleoclimatology, geomorphology and other relevent data lead to such seemingly unconventional concepts. The book is an open invitation to geoscientists of all calling to come out of the strait-jacket of Plate Tectonics and explore other avenues for understanding the mountain building process.